Gender, Women´s Emancipation, and Socialism in the Lives of Two Medical Doctors: A Comparative Look on East Germany and Poland

• In Event: Poets, Soldiers, Doctors, and Travellers: Intersectional Experiences of Women in Modern Eastern Europe

Abstract

This paper explores the trajectories of two female medical doctors: Eva Schmidt-Kolmer (1913-1991) and Izabela Bielicka (1915-2006) who became leading specialists in their field during state socialism, representing a generation that was educated before the war, but developed their career in the early post-war period. It will discuss advancement and limitations to women’s career in medical expertise, as well as their own approaches to Communism and women’s emancipation, and analyze the two examples of careers in pediatrics in the context of gender and Communism in Eastern Europe, both as a time of women’s rapid professional advancement and particular gender equality discourse. The paper addresses comparatively the intersection of medicine, gender, and socialism from two entangled perspectives: on the one hand, how these two women built a career amidst a male-dominated profession, on the other, how their scientific work contributed, or not, to the general emancipation of women under state socialism.

Author

• José Luis Aguilar López-Barajas, Institute of History CAS (Czech Republic)